* Note: This post came from a version of this blog that got lost in a server failure. It's been restored from old RSS feeds, Google caches and other sources. As such, the comments, links and associated media have been lost.

My job title changed today. For the first time that I can remember, I’m not a reporter. As of today, I am the News Technologist at the St. Petersburg Times.

What is that? We’re not sure yet, and it’s going to change a lot. It’s a hybrid job, a programmer-journalist job. We even toyed with programmer-journalist as the title. Simply put, I’m moving to the web to develop new products and tools and maybe reinvent a few things we’re doing already. I’ve been given the mandate to take my skills as a journalist and my growing skills as a coder and bash them together really hard to see what comes out. I’m going to take my 12 years of data-driven journalism and try to build things online that people want. I learned a lot making PolitiFact, and I’m burning up with more ideas. Now, instead of working them in around stories, these ideas are what I’m working on. It’s technology. It’s R&D. It’s databases. It’s local, national, mobile. It’s scary looking code I didn’t understand yesterday. And then, really, it’s all journalism. No matter how far from my journalism undergraduate education I get, it all comes back to getting compelling information into the hands of readers.

I’ll never really stop being an investigative reporter. But I’m tired of talking about and worrying about the future of journalism. It’s time help make the future. Directly. Hands on. Starting today.